Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Amid the coverage of the Continental tragedy in Buffalo, I found a Times Union article which could be a chronicle of my life. The story recounts the detective work of one Mark Abbott as such:

Mark Abbott, a self-described "aviation geek" from Denver, said the aircraft parked at Gate C1 at Albany International Airport last week quickly drew his attention...Abbott, a service technician, said he made note of the plane's tail number — N200WQ — and later followed its progress on a flight tracker Web site. The plane left the gate at Newark at 11:53 a.m., but didn't take off until 2:23 p.m., according to data from flightstats.com.

When he does it, people write stories in the paper. When I do that, people laugh and point at me. What the hell?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Remember the good ol' days when I used to blog a lot ... you know, that small time of year known as June - December. Well, those days are gone. So, readers - all six of you - you're going to have to settle for these junky posts, that frankly, don't even merit the free space that I have on the internet.

But, it's my blog, so I don't really care what you think about the lax quality of posts lately.

For those that are still reading, first of all, perhaps you should go spend some time with your loved ones instead of reading this crap. Second of all, I made a huge stride in my flight-simming tonight.

Unfortunately, even for plane lovers like myself, the same old routine on flight-sim can get stale. Today, however, realizing I had nothing to lose but time, I set the weather to the harshest setting, which, unbeknownst (sp?) to me requires the pilot (me) to file an IFR. I found out how to do it, and set myself up to fly from Burlington to Albany in a King Air 350.

The weather was nasty the whole way. I saw the terminal as I took off, and the next thing I saw was south Albany on my approach. If you look carefully on the picture below, you can see the rain reflected in the strobe light.

It was awesome. I was in contact with ATC the whole way. They gave me specific flight levels and headings, and led me to the approach. Flying this way after what I had been doing is like learning to play cricket after starting with 301.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

CBS 6 in Albany has a feature called the "Fact Finder." Unfortunately for society, the "Fact Finder" is full of s**t. Last night, they ran a story about the per diem of state legislators and how much it costs taxpayers to gavel in and out.

Yes, it's true. On some days, the legislature does just gavel in and out. Does that mean that no work was done?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

This time of year, both houses of the legislature are trying to formulate budget positions, holding hearings, and crafting legislation. Is the idiot "Fact Finder" suggesting that advocates and citizens not have a say on the budget? Are they suggesting that hearings are not necessary? Or that it's not really important to ensure that legislation is sound?

Frankly, it's incredibly offensive to myself and every elected official, policy staff, and support staff that you think we are not doing any work. And I am sure that if the legislature had not gaveled in, you would be bitching and whining about "Oh, the legislators get paid x and they don't even gavel in." Am I right? Eh? Eh?

So, "Fact Finder" - you lose. The problem with you, and other like-minded gossip "journalists" - if I can even refer to you as a journalist- is that you simplify a very complicated issue so that you can get your catchy tease for the 11 o'clock news. Then you get people all riled up over something that is completely false and misleading.

Go ahead, Channel 6 News, do your thing. But you have proved to be no different than that smutty TMZ show reporting on Lindsey Lohan's latest lesbian binge. You suck as a "news" show.